Tuesday, July 7, 2015

the familymoon

Just when you thought your day's luck had run out, I'm here to share a ridiculous amount of semi filtered pictures. And the details! Let's not forget those!

What will we do next?!
What will we eat?!
How many hours will the kids nap?
Will someone throw up?!
Multiple times?!

Yikes. Okay, as much as I'd love to punish you with a descriptive narrative essay of the entire weekend....I won't. Let's just hit the highlights and maybe throw in a few lowlights.

Jake's job sends the families on a long weekend trip every summer (bless them). Jake has meetings from 8 -12 every morning but the rest of the day-evening is ours which I am obviously a big fan off. Despite how crazy hotels + kids + the sleeping arrangements can be, we always go up an extra day early because it's still so fun to get out of the house for more than the duration of a Costco trip.

But!

We almost missed our first day of vacay because of Jake got his Wednesdays and Thursdays mixed up and we told me that we had were supposed to be there on Thursday when he had really booked starting on Wednesday.

Picture it:

SAHM, three small boys, a paid for room and pool going to waste, the husband out to dinner with clients.

Recipe for chaos? Si.

I ran banshee style around the house gathering our most prized possessions, begged for a any help from the boys and thought of something from way back when I was little (probably around 8...so a zillion years ago)...one of my friend's moms would always say, "and we're off!!...like a herd of turtles!!" whenever we would get in their van to go anywhere with her kids (plus a Julia) and in the naivety of my younger years I always thought that was funny but a little bit of a dramatic exaggeration.

Now I know.

Oh, I know.

She was actually just being wildly optimistic because CHILDREN.

Adorable cherubic childrenz.

So...I thought an hour to get everything packed ready was was realistic.

I thought.

Hah.

Almost three hours later we were off...like a herd of turtles.

But once we got there....

Worth it.

The number one highlight...the clear contender and winner was the accommodations.

Behold it all.

Is this real life? Do people with small children deserve to stay at such abundant beauty and grace?

Ehhh.

Maybe...(cricket, cricket)

And the rooms did not disappoint either. Especially the most important room in any hotel.

The bathroom. Or for those with kids, the second bedroom.

We had realllllly counted on one of the portacribs being able to fit in the bathroom but the reality of the situation...was amaze-balls. Behold the bathroom built by the unicorns of glitter and wonder.

The first morning Jake snuck out for his meetings and that shower was calling my name. In our master bathroom, we only have a walk-in shower, so this is a BIG novelty for my shower loving heart.

I got the boys set up with breakfast and snuck into the bathroom. I was lathering my hair with the fancy little shampoo from the fancy little bottle when I heard the hotel room's door open and slam. I peeked through the bathroom window (because I'm sure they had Julia Miller and Brood in mind when they designed the rooms) and saw one naked Rad debating whether to explore to the right or left.

I will not type all of the words I said from my post in the shower at this point but they were as sinny as you can imagine. This place was fancy, but still had the towels that covered to about my tailbone but!!!!! robes - luxurious robes they had. I threw one on - white lathered hair and all and peered outside to find Rad chumming it up with a middle-aged couple down the hall...

And that was my cue. I wished I'd been lathering my face to hide the bright red but...of course not. I dragged deodorant breath back into the room...and inspected and adjusted the lock situation and finished my shower. Rad brought me Jake's now mauled deodorant container that Jake had left out before he left and I felt it best to just pretend it never happened. (And Jake never questioned the bite marks so...)

The kids were quite taken with the (FREE!) ice machine (Jake may have really talked that one up, and they bit), the variety of channels, and the view.

But the pool! It beat the free ice machine by milezzz. Seeing the pool in real life almost sent Rhett into overly excited cardiac arrest. He'd been studying the website all week and could hardly believe we were actually there in the flesh.

Even though Rad had JUST been in a large pool he still had a little anxiety about getting his toes wet, so he preferred to river dance-prance along the sides.

Not in this snapshot, but earlier in the day Rhett sat down and asked a fellow pool-goer "so tell me, how's your vacation going?"... oh, I know he's my child but it still cracked me right up, up, and away.

Anyway. Moving on.

Wait....wicky wicky...what?? Who are these people? Random posing pool people? No. Just the Berners. Where they go, we tag along.

And steal their family picture posses.

Rad FINALLY decided to grace the water with his prescience and practiced his humpback whale noises threw his snorkel. We're real poolside peaches.

I wasn't planning on taking Beck into the pool but after Rhett's generous offer of, "You guys want to play with me and Rad? Okay. I'll let you."

And because I can't resist that kind of generosity...we joined...

Which he tolerated for about .3 seconds.

Throwin' some serious eyebrow shade at that pool after his venture into it's depths.

Oh these pictures? Why yes, we do sometimes have questions about our special little snowflake and his unique soul.

We had a little poolside character building bouquet making competition. It was close. Real close. (The pile on the left: Rad. The stem of the right: Rhett)

Post-swimming cherubs. They better be. Four hours a day poolside (solo parenting no less!) is not for the faint hearted. Come to think of it where's my gold star?

One night the brought the Jolly Roger in (a magician) and the kids went bonkers for his tricks and humor. Truth be told I was rolling too. He had a british accent which meant that every joke he told sounded SO MUCH FUNNIER. Nothing like your extra loud adult guffaw overshadowing the kids dainty chortles.

Rhett was virtually beside himself with giggle fits and Rad kept trying to insert himself into the limelight.

There was also an impressive continental breakfast...with the perfect chairs to contain the fellas waiting for their waffles and syrup because we trust the kids about 0% when it comes to food in an uncontrolled environment.

On the last night there is always a fabulously fancy dinner (with babysitting!!) which we must document with dozens of virtually the same picture, because if you take more than 30 minutes to get ready once a year, darn right you'll be taking some pictures.

And your husband will smile and indulge.

Or look like he's trying to escape your death grip on his sports coat.